Relapse

Sleep has been coming later and later. You feel like you need to do something, but you don’t know what that something is, maybe it isn’t anything, maybe just acting in any way would be positive.

You don’t do anything.

You become a sponge, absorbing whatever shlock peaks your fancy at a given moment, chasing down leads of mysteries that have no meaning, threads of a story you don’t care about. Then you pass out and your computer runs out of batteries because sometimes it doesn’t hibernate when you close the lid.

You’re always trying to Fix Things. The default way to do this is energy, find ways to have more energy, drink coffee and take stimulants and overdo it with your medication, if only for a day. “Can’t go over it, can’t go under it, gotta go through it”. Your stomach becomes a rapid exothermic reaction, you feel like your nerves have swollen and risen to the surface of your skin, you aren’t in pain, you are just feeling too much. If you stop for a second you realize you are vibrating. You fear you might explode.

You try to convey this to people. Is it a cry for help? Is it another way to keep things going? Everything feels circular and self-justifying.

Time loses meaning. Once you miss a deadline, you are living on borrowed time, you are a permanent result of your past, you know that you have to take up that past and do something with it but you are afraid that there is no point. You hope there is no point because then you won't have to put in the work to make things better.

Above all you are horribly, gut-wrenchingly scared. You have strategies for this. You know that you will make it through this. So why don’t you buy that? Why do you secretly believe that this is it, you’ve done it now, it is game over? Because action is hard, and inaction is easy.

People tell you that it is not your fault but how can you believe them? Have they SEEN what you do all day?

You have to make it through this -and you will - but you understand that at the moment you exit the pit, you will start going around in circles, and will fall in again.